Basketball office pools: It's about competition and a whole lot more 00:00 am 3/19/05 George Hesselberg Wisconsin State Journal

You get a list of 65 college basketball teams. All you have to do is pay $5 and pick which team will win six consecutive games. Does it really matter if you can't tell a Chattanooga Moc (which is a mockingbird dressed in railroad coveralls) from an Eastern Kentucky Colonel?

What's the attraction, or distraction, of an office pool to one out of every 10 Americans?

"There's a bunch of us PCVs trying to create a pool on the Internet, but it's hard for us because Internet access here is so slow and sparse and we're spread across a pretty big country. It's hard to follow college basketball from Ukraine, but as always, I'll wager everything on the Badgers and maybe a little on Marquette. If all works out well, some expat bar in Kyiv or Lviv might show the championship game live, but that means it will start about 4 or 5 a.m. and I'm too far away from any major city to make the trip worth it. We'll only be playing for our monopoly money - Ukrainian gryvnas. With 5 gryvna to the dollar, we can make big- sounding bets and still only spend pennies. But it's still money when you're living on 40 bucks a week. I don't know if anyone will ever be able to collect, though, since we'd all need to be in Kyiv at the same time, and that never happens. It takes me 20 hours on the train to get there.

"The guy running the NCAA pool had his mom send him the Super Bowl on tape. He stayed off the net for weeks and stopped anyone short if they started to talk about the Super Bowl. Somehow, he never heard the score. I was with him in Kyiv when he got the tape, and we watched it in the Peace Corps lounge. Amazingly, the tape ran out with 45 seconds left in the game and we had to tell him about the final plays for him to know the final score."

Contact George Hesselberg at ghesselberg@madison.com or 252-6140.

When this story was posted in March 2005, this was on the front page of PCOL:

The Peace Corps LibraryPeace Corps Online is proud to announce that the Peace Corps Library is now available online. With over 30,000 index entries in over 500 categories, this is the largest collection of Peace Corps related reference material in the world. From Acting to Zucchini, you can use the Main Index to find hundreds of stories about RPCVs who have your same interests, who served in your Country of Service, or who serve in your state.

RPCVs in Congress ask colleagues to support PCRPCVs Sam Farr, Chris Shays, Thomas Petri, James Walsh, and Mike Honda have asked their colleagues in Congress to add their names to a letter they have written to the House Foreign Operations Subcommittee, asking for full funding of $345 M for the Peace Corps in 2006. As a follow-on to Peace Corps week, please read the letter and call your Representative in Congress and ask him or her to add their name to the letter.

Add your info now to the RPCV DirectoryCall Harris Publishing at 800-414-4608 right away to add your name or make changes to your listing in the newest edition of the NPCA's Directory of Peace Corps Volunteers and Former Staff. Then read our story on how you can get access to the book after it is published. The deadline for inclusion is May 16 so call now.

March 1: National Day of ActionTuesday, March 1, is the NPCA's National Day of Action. Please call your Senators and ask them to support the President's proposed $27 Million budget increase for the Peace Corps for FY2006 and ask them to oppose the elimination of Perkins loans that benefit Peace Corps volunteers from low-income backgrounds. Follow this link for step-by-step information on how to make your calls. Then take our poll and leave feedback on how the calls went.

Make a call for the Peace CorpsPCOL is a strong supporter of the NPCA's National Day of Action and encourages every RPCV to spend ten minutes on Tuesday, March 1 making a call to your Representatives and ask them to support President Bush's budget proposal of $345 Million to expand the Peace Corps. Take our Poll: Click here to take our poll. We'll send out a reminder and have more details early next week.

Peace Corps Calendar: Tempest in a Teapot?Bulgarian writer Ognyan Georgiev has written a story which has made the front page of the newspaper "Telegraf" criticizing the photo selection for his country in the 2005 "Peace Corps Calendar" published by RPCVs of Madison, Wisconsin. RPCV Betsy Sergeant Snow, who submitted the photograph for the calendar, has published her reply. Read the stories and leave your comments.

WWII participants became RPCVsRead about two RPCVs who participated in World War II in very different ways long before there was a Peace Corps. Retired Rear Adm. Francis J. Thomas (RPCV Fiji), a decorated hero of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, died Friday, Jan. 21, 2005 at 100. Mary Smeltzer (RPCV Botswana), 89, followed her Japanese students into WWII internment camps. We honor both RPCVs for their service.

Bush's FY06 Budget for the Peace CorpsThe White House is proposing $345 Million for the Peace Corps for FY06 - a $27.7 Million (8.7%) increase that would allow at least two new posts and maintain the existing number of volunteers at approximately 7,700. Bush's 2002 proposal to double the Peace Corps to 14,000 volunteers appears to have been forgotten. The proposed budget still needs to be approved by Congress.

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Story Source: Madison State Journal

This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Ukraine; Sports; Basketball

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